The significance of learning in the course of a project can hardly be doubted; a valuable experience for all parties involved, it offers a plethora of lessons to learn. However, the acquisition of these experiences may become a problem for the members of the project due to the prevalence of single-loop learning (SLL) in most cases (Boddy & Paton 2004). While omitting the underlying assumptions of the process may be viewed as a necessity in some cases, e.g., the problems that demand an urgent solution, double-loop learning (DLL) is still preferable, as it allows for an in-depth understanding of the effects that specific choices have on the organisation. By incorporating a detailed and in-depth analysis of the project implications and the effects of decision-making in the project closure process, one will be able to introduce the staff members to DLL, therefore, contributing to employees’ understanding of how the organisation works and what underlies the choices that they make.
The specified models, therefore, can be incorporated into the project management process by introducing the staff to a specific set of values that a company is based on and making them carry out a detailed analysis of the choices that they make. It should be noted, though, that the timing of the specified stages is essential. While SLL can be viewed as a recurrent process that takes place whenever a specific choice has to be made for the further benefit of the project, DLL should become an integral part of the project closure. Thus, an elaborate analysis of the lessons learned may occur. For example, in a project aimed at promoting a specific product in a foreign country can be carried out as an SLL process with the company’s objectives and the required outcome in mind; however, the further analysis of the local culture’s specifics will allow the staff to realise what the manager’s decisions were based on thus, the lesson on diversity in marketing will be learned (Morris & Pinto 2010).
Therefore, by classifying the existing problems into the standard ones, i.e., the ones that can be solved with the help of the ethical principles and concepts that the organisation has already established, and the non-standard ones (i.e., the ones that require the acquisition and further learning of new decision-making ethical principles), the organisation will be able to incorporate both the SLL and the DLL processes in its framework. For instance, a project of promoting an organisation to a new audience will incorporate SLL (the choice of promotion tools based on company’s ethics (Mika 2011)) and the further analysis of the communication tools used in the process and the reasons behind their choice, such as the importance of social network in marketing (Evans 2010) (DLL).
The learning process, in its turn, can be facilitated with the help of a detailed analysis of the decisions and steps made by the project members in the course of its completion. Indeed, as von Zedtwitz (2002) explained, the lack of actual analysis of the key ideas learned during the project is what makes the latter rather pointless in terms of long-term professional growth of the staff: “One major drawback is the absence of investigations on learning in R&D after a project is actually finished” (Zedtwitz 2002, p. 256).
The integration of a post-project review, therefore, will help integrate the DLL model in the organisation’s operational framework. By creating the environment, in which the staff can revisit the ideas and concepts learned during the project, one enables the project participants to not only memorise specific behavioural patterns but also analyze their choices from a metacognition perspective, thus, viewing the causes and implications of these choices through the prism of the company’s ethical standards.
Reference List
Boddy, D, & Paton, R 2004, ‘Responding to competing narratives: lessons for project managers’, International Journal of Project Management, vol. 22, no. 3, pp. 225–233.
Evans, D 2010, Social media marketing: the next generation of business engagement, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Mika, A 2011, The importance of codes of ethics: examination of the need of business ethics and the efficient usage of codes of ethics for good corporate governance, Diplomarbeiten Agentur, Hamburg.
Morris, P, & Pinto, J k 2010, The Wiley guide to project organization and project management competencies, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Zedtwitz, M v 2002, ‘Organizational learning through post-project reviews in R&D’, R&D Management, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 255–268.